Blog: Wood 2 Your Moms

SxSW Interactive 2010

2010-03-11T20:54:14Z

In about an hour I'm headed out to Omaha to meetup with the other gents from Silicon Prairie News. We fly out from Eppley first thing in the morning en route to Austin, Texas for South by Southwest Interactive 2010 (SxSW).

I'm very excited to get the opportunity to participate in this year's event and plan on blogging as I get the chance down there. The Silicon Prairie News crew has a lot of stuff in the works so it should be a good time. I'm particularly excited for the Silicon Prairie Party (hosted by Big Omaha) that should be a great forum to network with other Midwesterners as well as show off some of the great things we have here to people from all over the world.

SxSW is sometimes called "Spring Break for Nerds" and it's fitting that this trip to Texas is almost 10 years to the day from my last Spring Break (also to Texas - South Padre Island). There's a history of new technologies debuting a SxSW, such as Twitter in 2007 and Foursquare in 2009. We don't know what the 2010 event will bring but one technology, Uppward, built by four of Des Moines technologists, launched today!

You could call them Aaron Burr by the way they're droppin' Hamiltons.

2010-03-11T06:29:55Z

I mentioned my late night TV host preferences in the last post and failed to mention Jimmy Fallon. I've never watched one of his shows all the way through but some of the skits he pushes out to the internet are hilarious. Apparently he has a knack for reunion shows, as he's done a Saved by the Bell reunion, a California Dreams reunion, and now a reunion of Saturday Night Live (SNL) alumnus Chris Parnell and current SNL player Andy Samberg for their classic "Chronic-what?-cles of Narnia" rap - the first of many great SNL Digital Shorts (which are accompanied by many more not-so-great ones).

By the way, it's funny that Jimmy references this video and YouTube at the beginning of the skit. NBC goes out of their way to keep their material off of YouTube and back when the original SNL skit aired (December 2005) they weren't even putting clips up at their own site.

Jimmy Kimmel is funnier than I think

2010-03-08T21:35:19Z

I never think about watching Jimmy Kimmel's late night show "Jimmy Kimmel Live" on ABC. I rarely watch late night tv, at all, and I've been in the Letterman camp since back in high school when I read The Late Shift. Conan is funny, too, but I never watched either oh his shows in regularity.

However, I caught a preview for this which cracked me up:

Combining that with his appearance on Leno and the whole Sarah Silverman/Matt Damon (& Jimmy/Ben Affleck) thing a few years ago, I probably need to tune in more often.

By the way, he sure has great talent booking to get all those Hollywood-folk together for his skits.

Iowish t-shirts

2010-03-07T04:50:00Z

Last year I made my first purchase from what was then SMASH when I picked up the "Kiss me I'm Iowish" t-shirt for my wife for our anniversary on March 12. I thought it was a fun gift since we were married in Ireland and all. The only problem was that she was too pregnant at the time to wear it (she did wear it home from the hospital after the baby was born in June).

I was excited to see that SMASH, now called Raygun, is selling the same shirts this year. However, they aren't the only ones. I was horrified tonight when I stopped into HyVee and saw this monstrosity:

Now, it's not so much that it's ugly (which is certainly is) or that it's Hawkeye (which actually makes me chuckle) but I was most disappointed in the fact that they blatantly copied the idea from SMASH/Raygun.

Or did they? I googled "Kiss me I'm Iowish" and found this lady in Southeast Iowa who claims to have invented (and trademarked) both the word "Iowish" and the phrase in question. Uh oh.

Did you know you can promote a song with video?

2010-03-03T15:27:31Z

Apparently bands still make videos and this one is pretty cool. I wonder how many takes it took? Honda claims this was done in one (not pieced together from several takes):

Vegan cookie, cargo shorts, hemp necklace

2010-03-02T04:32:29Z

We've been in Des Moines for more than six months now and we love it for a ton of reasons. Not least among them is getting to see most of my siblings (Sean lives in Arkansas, so we don't see him) regularly and enjoying inside jokes. One of which took place just last week and was documented on the interwebs.

Since I'm sure you're wondering what it is - I'll let you in. Check out this clip from Saturday Night Live a few months ago.

We enjoyed it so we shared it at dinner one night. Several weeks later, my wife bought a vegan cookie at the coffee shop up the street...

...and informed the world on Facebook. We promptly jumped in...

...which made me laugh.

By the way, the last line is from a previous SNL sketch, a commercial for Jack Johnson's line of "shoes that look like feet" known as JJ Casuals.

Neat promo video from McClanahan Studio in Ames

2010-03-02T04:17:00Z

Photography has been an interest of late and I've been enjoying following the blogs of photographers from near (like Malone & Co in Omaha) and far (like Slklav in Dublin, Ireland). Today, I caught up with the blog of McClanahan Studio in Ames (the Craig Brackins poster folks) who put out a neat promo video on their services.

Check it out:

McClanahan Studio from Dan McClanahan on Vimeo.

Great Sports Movie: The Damned United

2010-02-26T00:44:27Z

Michael Sheen image from Tsar Kasim on Flickr.com

Against my proper judgment, I watched a soccer movie. I had recently been wading through a bunch of old episodes of “At The Movies” on TiVo and caught the two critics praising The Damned United as a great sports movie. I was apprehensive, since I have no understanding nor care for soccer, but I went for it anyway since it starred Michael Sheen (pictured above) who I’ve enjoyed in past roles as famous Brits (Tony Blair in The Queen and David Frost in Frost/Nixon).

Leeds United jerseyI’m glad I went for it because the film was excellent. It’s a sports-themed movie but the plot is much more about Brian Clough, the man (Sheen’s character), than his sport. Clough was a soccer club manager who built his squad (Derby County) from a low level all the way up to champions of England. A few years later he took over the manager’s slot at his rival club (Leeds United), a dynastic champion, and lasted all of 44 days before being fired. He then went on to coach another underdog squad to the championship of both England and Europe, twice, which is an accomplishment never matched. The movie cites him as "the greatest manager never to manage the England [national] team."

The story is true but seems crazy when you put it in American sports parlance.

As ESPN’s Bill Simmons wrote about the movie:

“It's a famous English soccer saga that means nothing in America, but imagine [New England Patriots coach] Belichick taking over the Colts from Dungy this past summer and then getting fired in Week 6, and you have an idea of how loony this episode was.”

The English soccer system is completely foreign (pun intended) to American sports fans and I had to consult Wikipedia.com a couple times to research the importance of certain events but that didn’t take away from my enjoyment.

The actors are great, the characters interesting, the plot compelling, and story moves well. I watch a lot of movies and a lot of them are junk, however, this one is great. If you’re looking for a great sports movie you’ve never seen – this is probably it.

My cousin Justin featured in The Buffalo News

2010-02-25T18:17:01Z

My cousin Justin and his family recently moved to the Niagara Falls-area in New York. He's a Presybertian pastor, serving a church up there, and was the subject of a profile in a Buffalo paper. He doesn't mention in the article but he's one of three ministers in that branch of my family. We're quite ecumenical, my mom is a United Methodist pastor, Justin is a Presbyterian pastor and my mom's cousin, Tracy, is an Anglican priest.

Young pastor followed path from law school to Falls

By Louise Continelli

TOWN of NIAGARA — Justin Lee Marple once planned to go to law school, then work as an attorney.

“People had always said I could do anything I wanted to do,” recently recalled the former history major, “but when I started asking, ‘What is it that God wants me to do?’ is when I was put on the trajectory that’s brought me here.

Read the full article

Dog in a clothes basket

2010-02-24T12:44:13Z

When he was a puppy we'd put him in a clothes basket in the car to attempt to keep him in one place. Several years and 60 some pounds later it appears he's taken to the idea.